STULTS THROWS CAREER A CURVE

Slow burn

While pitching as effectively as ever, Eric Stults has been, by design, pitching slower than ever. The average velocities on his pitches this season would all be career lows:

Fastball: 86.3 mph (2006: 89.3 mph)

Slider: 78.1 mph (2006: 78.9 mph)

Curveball: 66.4 mph (2006: 75.6 mph)

Change-up: 77.0 mph (2006: 80.5 mph)

BOSTON 
In Middlebury, Ind., the horizon stretches forever, making a small farming town in the heart of Amish country seem even smaller. There, back at his offseason home last May, Eric Stults waited for what felt like an eternity.

Really, it was only two days. But for Stults, those two days spent playing catch beneath an endless sky might as well have been two months.

“I just didn’t know what was gonna happen,” Stults said recently, sitting in the visiting dugout at Fenway Park. In two days the left-hander was scheduled to make his first career start in one of baseball’s most storied venues.

In a confluence of unfortunate injury and providential opportunity, the Padres claimed Stults last season, plucking him from Middlebury, where he had returned after being waived by the Chicago White Sox, and inserting him into a makeshift rotation.

By that time the Padres had already lost six starting pitchers to the disabled list. Stults, the sixth man in the rotation for much of his career, suddenly had a rare — if uncertain — opportunity. “If I was to be honest, I didn’t think I probably would be here for that long,” Stults, 33, said. “It was just until guys got healthy.”

Funny that he should think that, for even after Stults himself succumbed to injury, missing 6½ weeks with a strained latissimus dorsi muscle, he became, of all guys, the guy on a stricken staff. Upon his return from the disabled list, Stults went 7-1 with a 2.79 ERA over his final 10 starts.

Those 10 starts alone would have matched his previous season high, set in 2009 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. As it was, Stults finished the year with 15 starts and a 2.91 ERA in 99 innings, another career best.

“The more I threw, the more comfortable I got,” said Stults. “I think just the confidence Buddy (Black) showed in me, even after I got hurt and came off the DL, that was a big confidence boost.

“I felt like, at times in my career with teams I’ve been on, there wasn’t that confidence. I would have two or three good starts and one not so good and one that wasn’t good and then I was always looking over my shoulder. It’s tough to pitch like that, not knowing if you’re gonna come in that day and then be sent back to the minor leagues.”

Not so in San Diego. Having made his first Opening Day roster since being drafted out of Bethel College in 2002, Stults arguably has been the most consistent starter on a pitching-strapped team. The victim of spotty run support, he is 6-7 this season with a 3.70 ERA, best among Padres starters.

Before last May 17, Stults had made just 25 major league starts. Since then, he has started 32 games. The Padres are 20-12 in those games.

“He surprised me last year because I didn’t know him,” said Padres pitching coach Darren Balsley. “What he’s done this year, it’s not surprising. ... He was penciled in as one of our five starters because of what he did last year, and he’s just continued to do what he did.”

The methodology, too, surprises opposing batters, who are often fooled by the journeyman with hittable stuff. According to
FanGraphs.com, Stults is averaging career lows — in terms of miles per hour — on all four of his pitches.

Yet the drop-off between his fastball, which occasionally reaches 90 mph, and his curveball, which has looped over the plate at 62 mph, is more drastic than ever.

“I’m not an overpowering guy,” Stults said, “but the fact that my curveball is slow and my best fastball may end up maybe touching 90, it makes it look a lot harder. It definitely helps having that big change in velocity, 25 miles an hour, sometimes more. Hitters have to stay back so long on the curveball that a fastball at 88 gets on them quick.”

Said Balsley: “What I think has made his curveball so good is, he can put his fastball where he wants it. A lot of guys don’t have confidence in their curveball, either. They don’t like to throw something that’s real slow. He’s got a lot of courage in the fact that he knows it’s a good pitch and he can throw it for a strike.”